Refurbishing Applianaces: Flipping a 2005 Toyota Prius

Get it moving- the longer you keep it, the more repairs you'll have to make on it. I vote sell ASAP.

Mezzanine wrote: Get it moving- the longer you keep it, the more repairs you'll have to make on it. I vote sell ASAP.

This. I flipped cars for years (@300+) and the secret was enjoying them just long enough that you could see some repairs on the distant horizon. That is when you sell. Your repair horizon seems pretty close, so it must be time. Nothing worse than having a car for sale that needs a part on the first test drive.

It's looking like I'm probably going to be listing it by Thanksgiving weekend at a 'pie in the sky' price that if I get offered anywhere near will happily sell it for.

Also, despite good sense saying to not take on any more projects- and SWMBO having said I can't have any more cars without selling one first- I may be picking up another dirt cheap (and I do mean DIRT CHEAP) car that I hope will be an even quicker and cheaper fix that I can turn around and sell before Christmas. Still waiting for final blessing from SWMBO about it- and it remains to be seen if it's still for sale.

Wow... against what I had figured, it looks like I may actually get the other car, I expected it to be long gone.

Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice, so I have everything together to detail the Prius, and will hopefully be able to get some good pictures of it so I can list it.

Still up in the air on the really cheap second potential flip, they're surprisingly bad at communicating. Day is GORGEOUS though, and I was able to get the Prius washed and waxed and snap some quick pictures which are now up on the Photobucket. I may just go with these for the initial listing, and worry about getting ones in a nicer setting down the line. To my annoyance I can't find my bottle of Back to Black either, so I didn't have the chance to go over the trim- something I"ll have to do later.

Ashyukun wrote: . To my annoyance I can't find my bottle of Back to Black either, so I didn't have the chance to go over the trim- something I"ll have to do later.

Use Kiwi shoe polish in the applicator bottle. Lasts twice as long, costs half as much

Well, other car fell through- the rant about that will go into the Minor Rants thread.

It just wasn't my day yesterday either- the CEL came back on with the P0420 code. Frankly, I'm at the point where I may just say, "Berk it." and deal with listing it with that still popping up and the disclaimer that it may need a catalytic converter down the line.

Ashyukun wrote: Well, other car fell through- the rant about that will go into the Minor Rants thread. It just wasn't my day yesterday either- the CEL came back on with the P0420 code. Frankly, I'm at the point where I may just say, "Berk it." and deal with listing it with that still popping up and the disclaimer that it may need a catalytic converter down the line.

Just clear it an keep going. I had a similar issue in my svt focus. Had an intermittent issue that turned out to be melted shielding on the crank sensor wires, and the following corrosion. It threw very similar O2 sensor codes. Even after I fixed the issue, I would occasionally get the light to come back up. I assumed I had not fixed the issue, but I said screw it, since we don't drive that car much. A few months later, the light went out and has stayed off for 6 months or so now.

Now I'm thinking that the ECU had all of its parameters so far out of whack adjusting for the crank signal intermittency that once it was fixed the ECU was causing its own lean and rich conditions and setting the code. Once it had some time to sit and re-learn from the good signal, its keeping things in better condition.

At least that is what I believe has happened.

I'm for the time being not planning on doing anything- but with planning on listing it, I figure it's smarter to state that it has come on intermittently than to not say anything about it and have it come on during a test drive.

Did you reset the adaptations when you reset the light? Some scanners/cars have a separate function for that.

Just found out that there's a $45 kit you can buy to enable the 'EV Mode' that European/Japanese cars have on them by default. Probably a good thing I didn't learn this earlier or I'd have gotten it and be using it a lot...

Ashyukun wrote: I'm for the time being not planning on doing anything- but with planning on listing it, I figure it's smarter to state that it has come on intermittently than to not say anything about it and have it come on during a test drive.

Adaptations?

adaptations are the same thing I called 'parameters' but adaptations is probably the better (correct) word.

Basically how ECU's learn over time. For example. You start your car cold, and you have a small vacuum leak. ECU uses stock air and fuel map to set the idle at 1500 RPM, but engine makes 1550 RPM. ECU reduces air and idle goes to 1500. If the ECU has to do this say 10 cold starts in a row, it takes the stock air and fuel map and adds an 'adaptation' to it for cold idle so that there is a bit less air to start. Now when you start your car the next day, the ECU runs the stock map plus the adaptation and hits 1500 RPM right away. Over time, the vacuum leak could get bigger and bigger and the ECU keeps adding adaptations. Finally, the vacuum leak is so bad that it affects other things and it gets fixed, but now the motor has a hard time idleing cold because its adaptations tell it to reduce the air so much more than normal.

Sometimes these adaptations can become a pretty large portion of what the ECU is doing, and that is why anytime you fix or think you have fixed a problem it may be a good idea to clear them and make the ECU start from its stock map again, that way you are not chasing problems that are actually due to funky adaptations your car learned from driving with a small issue for a long time.

Ah, OK. I don't know if resetting the OBD fault codes resets the adaptations/parameters or not. I haven't noticed any real change in anything other than that CEL coming on Sunday (it stayed off through a modest bit of driving yesterday).

There's a school of thought on the Prius forums that says that the 12V (aux) battery being weak can cause the lower than expected gas mileage I'm seeing- since I have another Prius battery that came with the car that was ostensibly bad, I'm going to do some playing with the batteries and see if I can swap the charged-up old battery in without losing settings and seeing if that help at all- and seeing how the 'new' battery holds a charge.

Found out after some additional research that it's actually very easy to install an 'EV Mode' button yourself, so I picked up the few parts needed from Radio Shack. Probably won't get to wire it up until after Thankgiving though.

Finally got the listing up for it: http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/4784992654.html

It's listed for a modest bit more than I expect it to sell for, but since I'm not in a huge hurry figured I'd list it for pie-in-the-sky and see what happens.

Rough estimate for the total (don't have the last of the receipts handy) in on the car is about $3k, so anything above that is pure profit. Ideally I'd like to have it sell for $4800 or more since that would effectively double the profit from having sold the Saturn (sold it for $1800 and bought this for the same amount).

Damn, that looks a whole lot better. I doubt it will pull $5250, but I could see you getting $4800 for it. Makes me wonder if I should consider flipping cars once in a while. How much time do you have in the car?

Are you really only getting high 30s-low 40s?

Wow! Your results look SPECTACULAR! Nicely done!!

ProDarwin wrote: Damn, that looks a whole lot better. I doubt it will pull $5250, but I could see you getting $4800 for it. Makes me wonder if I should consider flipping cars once in a while. How much time do you have in the car? Are you really only getting high 30s-low 40s?

I think $4500-4800 isn't unreasonable, I rarely see running and good condition Priusses for any less including older ones. Time-wise, I don't know exactly- that's something I intend to track closely with the next one to be able to calculate an effective hourly rate I'm making doing it. Of course, it's mostly out of curiosity since I don't really care as I'm having fun working on the cars.

I'm only seeing in the 30's to 40's in town. Unfortunately the way that the Hybrid Synergy system works, it's not nearly as efficient (like a traditional ICE...) for the first 10 minutes or so of driving until the gas engine has warmed up to normal temp and the car switches to full-hybrid mode (until then, it's far less likely to go into 'stealth' mode using only the electric drive). Installing the 'EV Mode' switch will help that a bit- it will let me force it to stay in electric-only until I get onto the main road when I'll be going faster than the EV mode will let me without kicking on the ICE. And unfortunately my 'normal' drive is only about 15 minutes, meaning the car isn't getting the chance to run at its most efficient most of the time. It's also a lot less efficient in the cold, both because of the batteries not liking the cold as well as still having a traditional heater core and thus if you use the heat, it runs the ICE more to keep the temp up.

On the highway, I've averaged in the 50's. Assuming it hasn't sold by Friday (which honestly if it does I'm kind of hosed- unless it sells like tomorrow and I have time to pick up another vehicle so I don't have to drive the DeLorean...) I'll be driving it to Louisville and back to try and grab some parts from salvage yards there, and I'm planning on resetting the MPG tracking before I leave to get a better feel for what it can do mileage-wise on the highway.

Gotcha. Was just curious on the mileage. We have a 1st gen, and seeing <40 is practically impossible, unless you are on the highway with a headwind. It won't do 50s on the highway though, the 2g and 3g are much more efficient there.

I hear you on the EV switch. I would do it to ours if I drove it more often. The first 3/4 mile of my commute is in my neighborhood at ~30mph, and is mostly downhill. Very wasteful for the ICE to be on and warming up at this point as it really isn't contributing any power.

Yeah, it has been a bit disappointing around town. It is definitely possible that either the hybrid traction battery isn't quite up to snuff but not enough so that anything I've checked on it shows up as questionable or the 12V battery is having issues, both of which could potentially affect the mileage. Were I going to be holding on to it for a good while longer, I'd probably be picking up one of the balancing charging kits for about $500 to balance the traction battery and 'refresh' it a bit. That's one very large unknown with this one: I have no record of whether or not the battery was ever replaced, so I have to assume it hasn't....

Datsun1500 wrote: I thought they were supposed to get better around town than the highway because they used the electric motor more

They generally do from what I've heard, but mine is a faster to kick on the ICE than I think it should be- but I haven't ever ridden in another Prius to be able to tell what 'normal' for it is...

Well, got my first response to the listing- someone asking about trading a 2001 Ford Ranger 4x4 extended cab. Depending on the options that COULD be a reasonably equivalent trade- I can get them up near $5k on KBB in Very Good condition, but I'm definitely more interested in at least getting some cash out of this or trading for something that is worth a fair bit more but needs some work.

Ashyukun wrote: Well, got my first response to the listing- someone asking about trading a 2001 Ford Ranger 4x4 extended cab. Depending on the options that COULD be a reasonably equivalent trade- I can get them up near $5k on KBB in Very Good condition, but I'm definitely more interested in at least getting some cash out of this or trading for something that is worth a fair bit more but needs some work.

I'm sure it's in horrible shape. I always get the most gawd awful trade requests on Craigslist. They are usually for in-pieces or been sitting in the trailer park's front yard (ran when parked, just needs a thermostat) type of trade offers.

I'm pretty sure you can still make a sizable profit off this, even if you price it low and let it go.

Yeah- I emailed him back and said that I was more looking at getting some actual money out of the car so any trade would have to include some cash and asked for more details on the truck. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not worth half what the Prius is, but may as well find out.

I'm sure I'll make a decent profit off of it- I have it priced somewhat intentionally high at the moment, I'll probably drop it down to more reasonable after the holidays.